Hardware Thermalright Venomous-X CPU Cooler Review

^ I think the thermal paste and fan is irrelevant as long as they used the same ones as they did on the TRUE mate.

 

take the fan off the fenrir and put it on the true, be a good compare

like they fixed the mounting bracket from the 120- I had to put a little bolt to increase the pressure of the clamp.. some people used to put pennies on the base

it looks like a true with a flat lapped base to be honest XD.. you could test their claim of curved by sitting a razor blade on it

 

Please bear in mind that testing methods vary across the board. We are one of the few places that test actually in a case, not on a test bench.

Harry also explained how he tested the nuts off this product. We've pushed the review back so he could have longer to retest it because he's also read the results elsewhere. We went over and above what we normally do tbh.

 

In some recent test I ran the only coolers that could beat HDT were Liquid Metal (Danamics LMX) and TEC based (CM V10) monstrosities, even these would also work better with HDT, possibly enough to justify the cost. All the lump of metal between the pipes and the CPU does is add a thermal gradient and add extra heat transfer interfaces meaning that the CPU runs hotter that in HDT designs.

 

Fifty quid for a cooler without a fan....epic lolz

 

unfortunately there is a large flaw in your testing, the fans, like I said the sharkoon fans are pretty infamous when it comes to their usefulness on coolers and rads. just cause the fan pumps a fair amount of air in the open doesn't mean it performs the same on a cooler. I think the results would have been better using a scythe GT or sflex fan or even a nice cheapo yate loon.

what fans were used on the fenrir and the TRUE? also the sharkoon silent eagle? if not then the test is pointless. The coolers need to be tested at the same ambient temperature with the same amount and brand of thermal paste and the exact same fan.

I also don't think testing in a case makes any difference, if anything it just introduces more variables into the mix depending on the case and the cooler orientation and can affect the results dramatically, that's is why test benches exist. Testing in a case is akin to hardOCP's "real world" testing, which offers pretty meaningless results.

I would like to see a RE-review of the fenrir vs TRUE vs venomous, on an open test bench with a high pressure fan. Then we can truly see which is the best cooler, cause at the moment, you are the only site to state that the cooler is mediocre.

EDIT: I also notice that in the review the venomous x with two fans performs worse than with 1 fan on the 1366 platform? That seems very very unlikely.

 

Oh look, it's the TRUE again, but with some new mounts.

 

real world testing is meaningless?? Let optimise a product so it does well in benchmarks who cares if the user can actually use it in.....you know.....real world applications.

 

Yeah who lives in the real world anyway. I live in a magical pretend world where there are all sorts of mythical creatures like unicorns and zebras.

Real world testing is the only testing worth anything at all. Who cares what it tests like on a bench test. Personally I dont run my computer on a bench test environment. I run it in a case strangely enough. So I would rather see how it performs in a case than out.

 

you miss my point, the case airflow might be biased towards one or more coolers and added in extra variables.

its like taking a nissan GTZ and a corvette and testing them in a drag race and saying that the corvette is a faster go cause it goes faster in a straight line, whereas given some curves, the GTZ is by far the better car.

yeh obviously it will be nice to test it in a case but the point of the review is to compare the cooler against other coolers and so the test environment should be free of as many external variables as possible.

I cant help but feel that something went wrong with the testing as BT is the only site with such results.

 

Actually I think you have missed several points...
Testing without the 'variables' is whats pointless as without those variables the results would be completely ambiguous and have no meaning in relation to anything else. As long as those variables are the same for the tests across the board then the results are true to form and give relative information. So while I personally do not like the chosen case Bit-Tech (not BT... that's so lazy!) use as it uses roof ventilation, as long as all rescent tests have used the same case then the results are valid.

As for your car analogy... please remember that you have to take in to account what it is you want to use said item for. If you want to win straight line drag races then the Corvette would be the better option. While the Sharkoon fans may or may not be the best fans to use, when it comes to using silent fans they are the ones that the majority will have and use. Yes, other fans may perform better but maybe at the sacrifice of the... silence.

These tests are never done with the intention of showing gaurenteed results in one's own machine and should only be used as a guideline. As such you can not call in to question the validity of these tests without proof that all the other tests as mentioned by yourself were carried out to the same levels of detail and professionalism with the same questionable variables.

So as a guide, surely the thing to learn here is that even if you take other site's results, this cooler only performs slightly better than its predessor while costing the better part of £20 (around 35%?) more than the established leader, the Titan Fenrir while not even coming with its own fan so add on another £10-£15.

 

Testing a cooler that comes with a fan against another cooler where you get to pick the fan is a troublesome, and then testing with two extremes, the insane high speed fan versus a super slow fan. The fan issue is bugging me a lot mainly because of my experience with sharkoon fans on radiators and other densely packed coolers.

a photo of the test setup would also be also nice to see, since they dont mention the cooler orientation and case setup. There is a lot of info missing from the review, if the tests were conducted in a case, mention the type of case in the review, what additional fans are used in the case and their orientation, also mention what thermal paste was used (using different thermal pastes for each test will skew the results massively). There is no mention of the fan used on the TRUE either, is it the same as on the venomous, if its not then you CANT compare the results, especially since the cooler doesn't come with a fan and is targeted at the enthusiast user, that user would often be quite picky about the type of fan used.

I'm would also assume that all the heatsinks were retested on the same day (as in most heatsink reviews) but looking at the results in the chart and the results of the last few heatsink reviews it seems that BT tests just the cooler on the day and then compares it to previous results done in the past. That is not IMHO the proper procedure for testing coolers, all the coolers should be tested on the same day, using a non curing thermal paste like arctic cooling mx-2 / ceramique, and the results of that day published. Yeh, I do realize there are time constraints when reviewing items (i used to work as a reviewer) but you could have simply limited the review sample to the TRUE, fenrir, and one more cooler in the upper price range. Testing 4 coolers on two systems in a single day is feasible as that just involves 8 heatsink changes and nothing else. I know you use the delta of the temp but that isn't enough to balance out the fluctuations since I know from experience that on a cold day my delta is much lower than on a toasty african summer day.

My issue isn't in the result, the venomous may well be a mediocre cooler, its happened before ( the IFX-14 ), my issue isn't even with the testing in a case but more so the lack of info in the review as well as the lack of consistency in the testing procedure. There is also the one point where two fans on the venomous performed 2 degrees worse than with one fan, while on the other test system the results are reversed. That's just not consistent, it doesn't make sense that two fans would be better in one case and worse in another, especially when the only change is supposed to be the heat load of the system.

I am not trying to piss on the review but I feel that my points are valid. If Bindi and the rest of the BT crew disagree then they disagree.

 

perhaps the other sites are feathering their nests? they always seem to love the new product.

 

well, at least they've sorted out the fan mounting holes, the original TRUE was a nightmare trying to get the clips in after it's in the case.

at that price, a Corsair H50 is better deal.

 

+1

 

Ripoff from Megahalems tbh...

 

you can play this game all day about who ripped off who, but the truth is, TRUE was the first tower cooler that's actually good.

 

Seriously? Real World testing offers meaningless results?

I personally use my CPU cooler in case, so I want to know how it performs in a restricted airflow environment, say maybe, a case? What use to me is knowing the fantasticly brilliant effeciency of a cooler in an open air enviroment, if I need it to work in a cramped environment where the premuim airflow it requires isn't available?

Theoretical performance in a perfect scenario, has no bearing whatsoever on how a product performs when it's in the real world. Consider this perfect scenario, the cpu under liquid nitrogen is the best way to cool it, and february last year made AMD the fastest chips in the world -

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009/02/25/hitting-the-overclocking-stratosphere-in-austin/

but in the real world, if you bought that over an intel, untilmately, you'd be losing out, because without Liquid Nitrogen and a team of expert overclockers, the amd chip isn't as good, that's the real world. People want to know how technology is going to work for them not in some dream situation they will never be in. Take away the perfect airflow from your cpu cooler put it in a real world situation, and see how good it is at the job he has to do it in.

One issue with the review though was the fact that this heatsink was supplied without a fan, and yet you tested it with fans. Why then when you tested the case the other week that only came with 2 fans, did you not fit the remaining? Shouldn't there be consistency, you test what comes out of the box. If it comes without a fan, then it's a fanless cooler, like a fanless case?

 

So >£50 for a fanless lump of metal. Me thinks there trying to cash in on the name. Why do they nickel coat it anyway wouldn't that lower thermal performance?

 

the titan fenrir fan is rated at 78cfm (according to the manufacturer - probably means its less). the sunon fan used in the single-fan/high-cfm test is rated for 80cfm. the venomous still lost.

stop whining about the sharkoon fans because they dont have any relevance. yes, the test would have been even more accurate with the fenrir fan on the venomous, but bit-tech must have thought that the fenrir fan and the sunon were adequately matched to give a fair fight. in which the fenrir won